Well, okay, then. “Fine. Let’s go to your party.”
Linx reached to squeeze her hand. He didn’t pull his hand away once the squeeze had reached completion. Instead, he turned her palm face up and linked her fingers with his on the console between them. Her entire arm sizzled at the simplicity of the touch, even though it was nothing but platonic.
Without her permission, her heart rate increased, and her hypothalamus released a slew of hormones that made her wish he’d touch her in other places, too. Intimate places.
Holding hands was nice, but it wasn’t running her tongue along the ridges of his pectoral muscles, down toward his belly button, and along the line of hair she expected she’d find there, down to his—
He skimmed his thumb over the fleshy spot between her forefinger and her thumb. This was not platonic.
Not the sort of touch a girl would have with a man who was only her friend.
Also, not a touch she expected from a guy she only intended to shag a few times.
This felt very relationship-y. She pulled her hand away. Hard no on that.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Of course.” She smiled and hoped like hell it was convincing. “I’m just thinking about chocolate cake.”
Chocolate lava cake and his pectorals...
Chapter 12
Linx
“I brought you a present,” Becca said, as they wandered through the lobby of the retirement home, following homemade signs to the multi-purpose room. The mauve Berber carpet muffled their footsteps.
“Oh, yeah?” he asked.
A present and cake? Wasn’t tonight just his night?
She rifled through her handbag and pulled out a can of ginger ale. “You’ll probably wreck your street cred if you drink this in public, but I like to be prepared.”
“You brought me ginger ale?” He stopped to examine the beverage. The gift wasn’t anything much, but it felt like a whole lot more than nothing.
She moved until her chest brushed his, just the slightest touch.
“I was hoping you’d have agreed to come inside when we got to my place for a drink before you went home.”
Well, hello then. That would have been very nice.
He parted his lips, but it seemed to happen without his consent or recognition. “You bought me a drink so we could hang out?”
“Among other things.” She ran her tongue along the seam of her lips in a way that stirred his body’s carnal response like they were backstage in his dressing room after a concert. Or when he was in the zone on stage. Like everything was right in his personal bubble.
The rush, the high of the show, produced an energy that needed release. He’d found…ways.
That idea, with Becca, made his entire body float.
They wandered through the dim hallways until they came to the rec room, following the signs that promised cake.
They had decorated the room with pastel blue and pink streamers like gender reveal parties his cousins were always having every time they got knocked up.
The scent was a mixture of the starch his mom used to use on his shirt collars—it itched—and the cedar chest his grandparents had in their summer home near Lake Michigan. It kept out the moths.
All of that was fine. Next to the door sat a long table filled with the cake they had promised. Another for punch. Along the edge of the room were various tables with arts and craft stations. A guy about his age demonstrated how to arrange flowers, a group of old women knitted, and some white-haired guys tied what looked to be fishing lures. There was also a younger woman instructing partygoers how to decorate cookies.
Wait, were those cookies shaped like penises?
